For those of you keeping score at home, the History Channel renumbered the seasons of Ancient Aliens, breaking up some of the longer middle seasons into multiples for DVD release and streaming. So what should have been season nine is now magically season 11. That’s why the episode numbering has changed. If Ancient Aliens can rewrite history at will, surely they can rewrite their number of seasons they’ve been on the air at will.

Tonight’s episode of Ancient Aliens (S11E02), “Destination Mars,” covers familiar ground—quite familiar in fact. It was only in February of 2014 that Ancient Aliens ran pretty much the same episode, but back then it was called “Aliens and the Red Planet” (old number S06E16, new numbering S07E05). The recycling of old material coincides with the Cartoon Network restoring Looney Tunes to its schedule this past week, which brought back to my TV Marvin the Martian and his infamous Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Compared to Ancient Aliens, Looney Tunes was practically a documentary.

Segment 1In a change of pace, we open with a science fiction imagining of what it might be like when NASA sends a crew to Mars a decade from now, with commentary from Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon. Onetime Discover magazine editor Stephen Petranek, the author of a book about colonizing Mars and current head of a biotech and “wellness” conference series, also takes advantage of the Ancient Aliens platform to shill for his book, even though science and pseudoscience ought to be at odds. They talk to some other people, including a physicist, a biologist, a candidate to travel to Mars as part of the Mars One project, etc. The segment focuses on how we would colonize Mars and eventually terraform it, though it has little or nothing to do with ancient astronauts.

To try to make it connect, William Henry alleges that the Book of Genesis describes aliens terraforming the Earth by creating an atmosphere (the firmament) followed by plants, animals, etc. George Noory concurs, but adds that there is a real God, too. David Childress repeats almost exactly what all of the earlier pundits already said because he’s always a day late and a dollar short. ​

Segment 2The second segment starts by recapping recent news about whether there is flowing water underground on Mars. It then falls back in time to repeat information about the 1996 announcement of microbial life in a meteorite that came from Mars, a claim later disputed with the argument that such findings were either not actual microbes or the result of contamination from the Earth. The evidence is still uncertain, but the show has no trouble declaring the microbes Martian, followed by a version of the panspermia hypothesis that would suggest Earth life began on Mars before meteorites fell to Earth. While this might be a scientific hypothesis, Ariel Bar Tzadok shows up to tell us that the Watchers from the Book of Enoch lived on Mars and threw rocks filled with Martian bacteria to the Earth. You see, the Fallen Angels were, according to Jonathan Young, extremely sexy giants “at least 10 feet tall” and came, as William Henry said, from the fifth sphere of Dante’s heaven, Mars. Someone has been reading my blog! As I discussed back in their earlier Mars episode, Dante’s geocentric worldview placed angels on each of the crystalline spheres in which the planets were embedded. This, as I have written in the past, is the origin of Theosophy’s idea that the Ascended Masters lived on various spheres, and thus of the ancient astronaut theory that is now reading its own origins back into itself as confirmation of its truth!

There is yet another ridiculous claim: They say that humans born on Mars will be taller and skinnier than Earthlings due to lesser gravity, so that’s why Fallen Angels from Mars were tall, thin, and beautiful! Note to Ancient Aliens: The Fallen Angels are not the Nephilim, so they were not (necessarily) giants. (It really depends on whether you subscribe to degeneration theory, which is another extra-canonical Bible question altogether.) Similarly, they are not especially thin and “spindly.” They have confused medieval Gothic art, with its stylized and elongated forms, for ancient facts.​

Segment 3The third segment describes the long trench on Mars called the Valles Marineris, and it speculates on how the massive canyon formed. A 1974 claim that the valley was blasted out by a giant cosmic lightning bolt is given as a plausible idea, though scientists disagree. Giorgio Tsoukalos uses this claim to argue that aliens have thunder-weapons powerful enough to blast a planet because Indo-European myths represent lightning as a weapon of the storm god and imagine it as much more powerful than it is. The Indo-European myths are pretty clearly derived from observations of actual lightning, but the show prefers to imagine that the myths follow a technological reality. We then get a repeat of John Brandenburg’s claim that Mars underwent nuclear catastrophe. We’ve heard this at least three times on the show, not to mention on competing programs like Unsealed: Alien Files. It isn’t getting any more correct through repetition, and to date mainstream scientists continue to doubt that the xenon-129 on Mars is anything but natural, nor do they concur with his claims that the moon is full of alien bases, or that he alone has reconciled gravitation, quantum physics, and general relativity. ​

Segment 4This segment looks at images of rocks on Mars and asks us to imagine that the random shapes were intentional sculptures resembling those found on Earth. Not one of them is convincing, and even the narrator admits that pareidolia could be behind the sightings. Joseph White, a Photoshop expert, believes that by enhancing the NASA photos of Mars he can restore the images and reveal details not present in the original. The problem is that sharpening images, as he knows, doesn’t add new information that is already in the image but rather uses a computer to create new pixels based on algorithms and assumptions. White, in selecting how to sharpen and enhance the contrast of a photograph, unconsciously biases the final result in favor of his assumption. The segment also gives Mike Bara time to speculate on whether the Martian region called Cydonia is a ruined city designed to reflect the Pleiades, but the show presents no evidence for accuracy or astronomical alignment. Bara only says that the alleged pyramids of Cydonia “basically” look like the Pleiades. Even a cursory examination of a graphic created by Sitchin Studies believer Wayne Herschel shows that the alignment is both inaccurate and based on selectively choosing particular rocky outcroppings to call pyramids and which stars to declare relevant.

Segment 5A random shadow in a NASA rover photo from Mars that sparked conspiracy theories because it sort of resembled a human form is declared not just evidence of aliens but proof of a NASA conspiracy. The conspiracy theory angle repeats material from earlier Ancient Aliens episodes, including “The NASA Connection” (S04E05) and “NASA’s Secret Agenda” (S08E02/S10E02). It repeats pretty much all of the conspiracy theories about Werner von Braun from the latter episode and concludes that von Braun planned secret missions to Mars that the general public isn’t allowed to know about.

This segment led into a promotional advertisement for Ancient Aliens: The Game, in which we are invited to “abduct primitive humans,” “build ancient civilizations,” and “play today.” The whiplash I get from the contrast between accusing NASA and the U.S. government of unfathomable evil in a vast conspiracy to oppress all humanity and an invitation to enjoy the same conspiracy theories for fun makes my head hurt. There is probably an academic thesis in there about how it is possible to both believe yourself under siege from evil aliens and an oppressive government and to treat that belief as recreation, but as we approach 10 PM Eastern Time and the end of the episode, I am a bit too sleepy to puzzle it out right now.

Segment 6The final segment discusses Elon Musk’s optimistic claims that the for-profit Space-X will take us to Mars, and the various talking heads suggest that we must colonize Mars to protect humanity from the horrific disaster that is always coming but never quite arriving in ancient astronaut lore. This time, it’s an asteroid that will “inevitably” hit the Earth at some point between now and an unknown future. According to the talking heads, Mars is where we can go to escape when Earth becomes unlivable due to various disasters either of our own making or from above. It’s almost tempting to see the all-white cast advocating flight to a gated community on another planet as a reflection of recent politics projected into space, but any unconscious recognition of the cultural resonance of select groups escaping to another planet while the rest of us burn is too far beneath their conscious understanding.

"The recycling of old material coincides with the Cartoon Network restoring Looney Tunes to its schedule this past week, which brought back to my TV Marvin the Martian and his infamous Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Compared to Ancient Aliens, Looney Tunes was practically a documentary."
Hahaha! That made my day! That's one of my favorite Looney Tunes Cartoon as well!
Sure sums up the comparison!

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Phillip

5/13/2016 10:45:27 pm

Jason, I'm glad you mentioned in this post how AA is using its own previously documented speculation, as current evidence.
The search for the "truth" comes down to reruns

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Ginam M Torresso

5/13/2016 10:47:43 pm

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Ginam M Torresso

5/13/2016 11:30:58 pm

Ancient Aliens scared me tonight..

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Only Me

5/14/2016 01:39:04 am

Jason, maybe you should just make your review like this:

"See my review of episode _____."

Then, if there is anything worth addressing, you can do that. Shouldn't take more than, oh, five minutes, tops.

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Time Machine

5/14/2016 02:21:47 am

And you should start your own anti-Scott Wolter and anti-Graham Hancock blog as well.

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Only Me

5/14/2016 03:14:08 am

Let's make a deal.

You stop spamming *this* blog with your repetitious bullshit and lame attempts to insult those who disagree with you on *anything*, and I'll take your "suggestion" under consideration.

Clete

5/14/2016 10:32:33 am

Only Me, be kind. Time Machine has little to do on "Know it all Mountain".

Only Me

5/14/2016 11:33:13 am

Thanks, Clete. You made my day. :)

Clint Knapp

5/14/2016 07:25:23 am

"They say that humans born on Mars will be taller and skinnier than Earthlings due to lesser gravity..."

Wasn't that one of Asimov's Spacer culture points? It's been a long time since I read the Robots or Foundation series, but I thought that beyond extreme longevity those who lived primarily aboard the ships shuttling people and cargo (mostly cargo) from Spacer worlds tended to be taller and thinner than earth men.

I must say, though, I'm all for the entire AA cast getting to go live on Mars after thinking about it in a Naked Sun context: they'd each have their own homes surrounded by robots and would never have contact with other human beings.

Truly a paradise for us all.

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BillUSA

5/14/2016 08:29:06 am

It's been a while since my last post, but it took all of about ten minutes of watching an Ancient Aliens episode on Antarctica to get me riled.

I remarked to the person who had it tuned in "Notice how they never declare anything, and just submit everything in the form of a question?" (I also noticed that George Noory needs a new rug).

And let's not forget how the government is behind some conspiracy to cover things up so as to prevent the AA wingnuts from ever obtaining even the slightest bit of tangible evidence. They also have this penchant for building underground tunnels and cities, which I find most curious. I mean if a species has the technological capability to traverse the voids of space, they must be (and I assume here) technologically superior to anything we nearly-hairless apes have conceived, why would they enter a deal with the governments of Earth to conceal their presence? They are either irretrievably stupid or like to waste their time getting to the point.

The magnetic anomalies (so suggested by ancient alien theorists who believe) are most probably due to the shifting polarity of the Earth's magnetic field AND the impactor which struck Antarctica (some suggest an extinction level event) 435 million years before the Chicxulub event.

The concave formations (according to ancient alien theorists) which supposedly mark entrances to vast underground networks of the aforementioned tunnels and cities, could very well be sinkages attributed to volcanic activity. I counted 36 volcanoes (number of active/extinct mounts I do not know) on the continent - perhaps they are one thing aliens forgot to bring with them.

Anyway, that's enough venting (pardon the pun) for ten minutes of exposure to Ancient Idiots (sorry, it's the best I could come up with). Like it is with radiation, limited exposure isn't deadly, but it isn't healthy either.

John Brandenburg really is a hoot.He builds a tottering edifice of thermonuclear war theory on the observed fact that in the atmos of Mars the isotope xenon-129 is more than 2.5 times as abundant in relation to the dominant isotope 132 than in Earth's atmos. Wait, his critics cry, xenon-129 is not a fission product of uranium, plutonium or thorium. True, he says, but it is a product of a very special process called fast fission. This is used in breeder reactors and some thermonuclear triggers.

OK John, fair point but how likely is that? Here's the alternative explanation: The way nature makes xenon-129 is by decay of iodine-129 with a half-life of 16 million years. The evidence is that Mars lost almost all its atmos quite soon (say 100 million y) after its formation. Iodine, being a solid at normal temperature and pressure, would have been preserved during this catastrophic event, and there's been plenty of time for xenon-129 to be preferentially replenished by decay of iodine-129.

Which do you think is the more likely explanation for the observed data?

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DaveR

5/17/2016 09:23:01 am

An alien thermonuclear war, of course, which took place shortly before they sent DNA infused rocks to Earth.

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Bob Jase

5/14/2016 01:08:06 pm

The collective IQ of the US drops every year the History Channel & its ilk exist.

We finally have something almost as poisonous as religion.

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Ken

5/14/2016 01:18:19 pm

Ken Burns - get out your checkbook. How about an episode called "AA-The Mammary Connection"

Have you ever noticed how all the statues or renderings of most ancient goddesses shown on AA have breasts that stand out at attention much more like the movie bimbos of today than the natural 'sagging'anatomy one would expect in antiquity?

Is it possible that aliens shared this technology with a Houston TX Dr back in the early 1960's?

At last - a new idea for AA. KB - your invoice is in the mail.

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DaveR

5/17/2016 09:24:07 am

I can imagine the Morgan Freeman voice over.

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Shane Sullivan

5/14/2016 01:27:51 pm

"Giorgio Tsoukalos uses this claim to argue that aliens have thunder-weapons powerful enough to blast a planet because Indo-European myths represent lightning as a weapon of the storm god and imagine it as much more powerful than it is."

Yeah, I believe he said they were powerful enough to destroy entire worlds, presumably confusing Vajra/Mjolnir/Zeus' Thunderbolt for some of the Astras in the Mahabharata.

PS - A great production sound trick - lower the volume on the "if"'s,
"perhaps"'s, "maybe"'s, etc. Raise volume slowly to stunning conclusions.

Now who do you think should play Richard Kieninger?
Ron Jeremy or Leo Di Caprio?

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DaveR

5/17/2016 09:25:02 am

Ben Aflec.

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Gina Torresso

5/14/2016 04:11:14 pm

I have to say Episode 2 Season 11 left me with my mouth open. This is what we are dealing with in the year 2016. The idea of a possible Mass Destruction to our planet is scary indeed. Do I think possibly, Earth Humans descended from Mars? Possible. I cannot say it is not true. It definitely left me a lot to think about. Most impressionable moment for me, when the similarities of what could of happened in comparison with the bible passages. Another hair stander was the fact that if an asteroid hits Earth, Most of us will die, only the selected few will be getting on those Rockets to Mars... and that for me, is a scary and sad reality.

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Uncle Ron

5/14/2016 09:41:26 pm

Don't fret, Gina. If the asteroid strike is so destructive that we have to leave Earth, it most likely will have destroyed our capability to build the rocket.

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Gina M Torresso

5/15/2016 12:08:50 am

Uncle Ron thank you, but I'm sure preparations are already being made for that day.. There will be done warnings before it hits and people will be on those rockets..

Big Mike

5/15/2016 12:45:47 pm

I sincerely hope that you are being sarcastic, but your user of "could of" rather than "could have" or "could've" (grade school grammar) makes me fear that you really are serious.

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V

5/23/2016 02:19:53 pm

" Another hair stander was the fact that if an asteroid hits Earth, Most of us will die, only the selected few will be getting on those Rockets to Mars... and that for me, is a scary and sad reality."

Except, darling, that's not a fact, it's a supposition. Not even a REASONABLE supposition, honestly. A lot of people love to point at past extinction events and presume that human beings will go the way of dinosaurs...except that "dinosaurs" did NOT all die during that event, or we wouldn't have birds now, and it completely fails to take into account that human beings are the single most adaptable species that has EVER lived. We can hermetically seal off a space and grow crops without the need for the sun--we already DO it. We can create air out of water and rocks and put it into a bottle and breathe where there is no atmosphere at all, or in deeply poisonous atmospheres. There is NOTHING that an impact even could do to the planet that we do not ALREADY have the technology to handle. Would there be a huge loss of life? Definitely. Would it mean the extinction of mankind? Almost certainly not. Would it mean that only "the selected few" who have fled to Mars will survive? Absolutely not.

And if the event were really big enough to completely wipe out life on our planet, it would need to be something like a supernova gamma-ray burst, or our sun going nova, and being on Mars wouldn't be nearly far enough away to survive.

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DaveR

5/23/2016 03:42:47 pm

Not to mention the Earth, even after a large impact event, will still be far more hospitable to life than Mars.

John Cocktoastin

5/14/2016 11:11:18 pm

I can't take this show anymore. Unless it is the greatest government ruse to get people to not believe in Alien visitation I just can't take it anymore. It's like being hypnotized with stupidity.

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DaveR

5/17/2016 09:29:38 am

I used to be able to watch AA and laugh, however the last time I attempted watching an episode I just groaned, and when Giorgio Tsoukalos outright lied about the stones used to construct Puma Punku I switched to something far more educational, I think it was Sponge Bob Squarepants.

Why has no one connected the dots between AA and the proposed
alien invasion? AA ran episode on Mars project airing MAY 2016 making reference to SPACEX, Von Braun, structures on Mars, emitting CO2 on Mars for growing besides the astronauts growing
2" taller... [google has OXYGEN listed] whereas all the others mentioned
can be found on google other websites...meaning there is 'back up'
for what is viewed on AA.

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.